Source Material
Where is Home? shares the experience of a new generation of refugees and asylum seekers, exploring the human dimension behind one of the most controversial political issues of our time. Through beautifully powerful performance featuring drama, black dance, music including live drumming and spoken word, Where is Home? connects us all to our understanding of home and the universal need to belong. Where is Home? Publicity Flyer
The play is an exploration and sharing of Manchester African and African Caribbean identity, experience and diaspora and what it means to be 18 years old. Where is Home? Performance Leaflet
Afrocats provides the young women with a positive sense of identity; belonging to a group that has a public profile and is warmly received by a variety of audiences has a very positive influence on the lives of the young women involved. The sense of pride and confidence gained from public recognition and praise was a frequently reported outcome belonging to the group and the Where is Home? project. Where is Home? Evaluation Report
The sensitive, experienced and skilful leadership of the project by the two leaders meant that the young women were not obliged to share difficult or traumatic stories if they chose not to. Interestingly, and importantly, it is clear that those who chose not to share their personal histories in an explicit way nonetheless felt that their lives were authentically and powerfully represented. Where is Home? generated a metaphorical space, invented contexts and narratives to represent the 'real'. Individual young women were never exposed as 'refugees' during the performance; what was communicated to the audience was a sense of togetherness, joint exploration and personal and political commitment of a diverse group of confident and dynamic young women. The project provided a structure for having what were sometimes terribly painful experiences acknowledged, recognised and honoured, without placing individuals in a position of having to 'tell' or exposing them in any way. Where is Home? Evaluation Report
[One] young woman explicitly said that experiences of a conventional therapeutic encounter - sitting with a psychotherapist - had not provided this sense of release or well being. The dance is also important here - the young women described a feeling of forgetting everything on stage - feeling consumed by the energy of the moment, dance as a liberating space where the focus is on experiencing enjoyment and communicating joy to other people. The sense of joy and celebration of the presence, familiar to audiences of Afrocats dance performances, was also very present in Where is Home?. Where is Home? Evaluation Report
